from The Great Book of Bob (©2009)

Russell and the Wildflowers

It was Russell's sixty-fourth birthday and he wasn't taking it very well. We were building a bathroom addition on the back side of a mountain cabin and early in the day he had made a minor, correctable error in the cutting of a board and had spent the next four hours mumbling and occasionally shouting self-deprecating invectives at himself. Russ is a craggy old mix of mind, time, backbone, and creative orneriness. Though almost always gruff, he is seldom crabby beyond the reach of his twisted sense of humor.

Observing this rare occasion of irascible temperament, I saw a golden opportunity to ride the old goat for all it was worth.  Such is the nature of our friendship.  Though fifteen years older than myself, during the years we partnered on various artisan endeavors it was a rare day when he couldn't outwork me.  He is easily the world's fastest carpenter—albeit, on occasions not the world's most precise. I, on the other hand, a relative novice in matters of construction, am inclined to excessive measurement and extended contemplation of the impact of each swing of the hammer, the permanence of each cut of the saw.  I have been known to take longer building a bookcase than Russ would require to convert a vacant lot into a fully functioning family dwelling.  It was a good combination.  I kept Russ honest and he kept me moving. Though I believe I always earned my share of the money we were paid by the various customers of our craft, there were some days when it seemed Russ was letting me tag along more as a matter of friendship and compassion for a starving poet than out of dependence upon the contributions I made to the process.   However, regardless of extrinsic value to our daily toil, whether in the act of sliding off a roof, flattening my thumb with a hammer, or just tripping over a toolbox; I was a constant source of a good laugh and that had to be worth something.

 

 

Friendship is often maintained by such a balance of diverse identity. But, also, such tangential elements are conducive to an occasional lapse into spite.

Having heard my partner utter to himself, perhaps the tenth time that day, the growling phase, "You dumb son of a bitch, Russell. Can't you do anything right?" I sensed it was time to strike. I put down my hammer and walked over to where he was kneeling, measuring a doorway for a threshold. Placing a firm and kindly hand upon his shoulder I said, "Don't worry, Russ. I understand."

There was a long pause before he responded. "Twenty-eight and a half inches," he said.

"It's mortality, isn't it?" I said. With a characteristic grunt he rose to his feet, pulled a pencil from underneath the brim of his hat, wrote down the figure on a two-by-four, and said, "What's your problem?"

"I'm right, aren't I?  It's mortality."

"Robert..." he started.

"It's your birthday, you're almost six and a half decades old, you're thinking about death and futility; the dreams of youth, the reality of this day."  I was going to go on with. ‘empires conceived; crappers constructed,’ but half the art is knowing when to stop.  I just stepped back, smiled knowingly, and repeated, "I understand."

"Robert, I'll tell you what I understand. If you'd concentrate a little less on philosophy and a little more on the heads of the nails you're supposed to be driving, you might not bend so damn many of them over."

I loved it.

We quit early that day. One advantage to being self-employed, itinerant mountain handy-persons is nobody seriously expects you to

get much done.  You can call it a day whenever you feel like it.  We felt like it about two thirty in the blue-skied, snow-peaked summer afternoon. Up in that country everywhere you look there is awesome beauty—pinewood forests, cascading streams, sheer-walled rock faces, and, above it all, the Continental Divide jutting the sky with thirteen and fourteen thousand foot crests.

"Pack the tools, Robert.  We can finish this job tomorrow."

Russ and I share a common belief in the absolute finality of the passing of time.  You never get a day back for a second try.  For this reason you should waste as little of it as you can get away with without seeming to be totally worthless.  While work of itself is not necessarily a waste of time, excessive dedication to the mechanizations of wage-earning can definitely distract one from the higher purposes of sunshine, nature, and the human spirit.

"I'll borrow the old Land Rover.  We'll take a little drive up the side of the mountain.”

And thus it was to be—another day barely, but resoundingly rescued from the throes of toil and time by the wisdom of irresponsibility.  It was nearing five o'clock when we began our escape from pragmatic matters and headed up the jeep road in pursuit of ageless and impractical goals. By the time we procured liquid provision for the journey, obtained access to a friend's truck, prepared that friend's truck for the trek, and bade Russ' wife, Becky, sweet adieu with a promise we'd be back for dinner; the angling light of the late afternoon sun had begun to intensify the greens of the forest, to deepen the shadow-filled crevices of the rocks, and to veritably glow in the invisible essences of the air. We both just let go and took it all in as we banged and clanked and growled ourway up the rocky ledge of the two-rut road.  I had to laugh out loud at the ridiculous beauty of the moment, and for the first time that day I saw Russ grinning.

 

Half way up the steepest section of the climb, he suddenly let off on the gas, set the brake, forced the door open against the will of gravity and disappeared over the side as if he'd stepped off the edge of the Earth.  I wasn't too worried.  I just figured he had experienced a sudden urge to relieve himself.  However, it turned out to be more than simply a biological matter that had impelled him to abandon the vehicle in such a precacious location.  It was aesthetic.  Presently he reappeared and pulled himself back into the truck with one arm. Panting, spitting tobacco, and grinning more than ever; from the palm of his free hand he carefully deposited three wildflowers on the seat between us.

"Let's go, Robert," he said.

Up past the harrowing ravines and hairpin turns of the road, we came to the summit where ranges of snow-ridged wonder edged the west and deep canyons drew beneath.  We listened to voices of shifting winds and the sighing rage of falling waters.  Russ picked more flowers. He told me, if you take just one or two out of each cluster and don't disturb the roots, what's the harm in gathering some beauty from the plenty of a remote hillside.  We sipped a few cans of brew as we sat up in the rocks laughing, talking, and just enjoying the silence.  Some fine time slipped away and then we made our way back down the mountain.

Becky was waiting for us on the front porch when we pulled into the driveway.  She wasn't smiling.

"Well, Robert, supper got cold.  We're in big trouble now."

"Don't give me any of this 'we' business.  I'm out of here."

"Not so fast."